Take a quick look at the 13-5-1 record for the University of Vermont men’s soccer team and one thing sticks out. It isn’t the tie.

It’s Oct. 7: Albany 4, Vermont 0.

The Catamounts’ worst defeat of an otherwise high-flying fall is an eyesore on their 2016 resume. But was it their worst performance of the season?

“(Of) the season or the last 20 years?” said UVM coach Jesse Cormier. “Four-nil, on the road — yeah, I think for the year. They really did a number on us. I think during the process of the game we were pretty much in shock. But earlier (that) week they beat (then-No. 3) Syracuse. They’re that good.

“If you’re not ready, you’re not competing, you’re not really organized and you go in with an attitude that’s not right, that’s what they’ll do to you.”

The third-seeded Catamounts, reigning America East champions on a four-game winning streak, get their chance to make good on Wednesday, traveling to face the No. 2 Great Danes at 7 p.m.

“That night when we played them we talked about getting another shot at them,” Cormier said. “I thought we lost in just about every area of the field … it was a wake-up call for us. We learned a lot from that game and hopefully going into Wednesday we’re better.”

Albany (10-5-2) is 15th in the nation in the latest RPI rankings released Monday, one of five America East schools in the top 50.

UVM (26th) has dropped three of its last four against the Great Danes, the last two by a combined 7-0.

“To be honest, the last two years they’ve had our number,” UVM senior forward Bernard Yeboah said. “They probably feel like they were the real champions last year instead of us. It’s a big rivalry.”

It took a late escape for the Catamounts just to survive their quarterfinal date with No. 6 Binghamton, which UVM beat 2-0 a week before.

After the Bearcats grabbed the lead midway through the second half, Yeboah equalized from a tight angle — on a deflected shot, no less — in the 87th minute. And senior striker Brian Wright netted the 2-1 winner with 90 seconds left in double overtime, cleaning up a rebound after shot from Shane Haley.

“Really good feeling after the win there. We knew it was going to be a different Binghamton than we saw in the regular season,” Wright said.

Yeboah’s tally was his 11th of the season, tying him for ninth in the nation with Wright, whose haul this year also includes 10 assists.

Wright’s 32 points through Nov. 7 are fifth in the country. Freshman Jon Arnar Barddal’s six assists have further bolstered an attack that, along with speedy wingers like Haley and Stefan Lamanna, is 10th highest-scoring outfit in Division I.

The Catamounts’ 37 goals are already more than their 2015 title-winning team.

“That’s the beauty of this group. They can come at you in so many different ways,” Cormier said. “Stef (Lamanna) is a very dangerous player. Brian, Bernard, Shane doing his 1-v-1 stuff — they really do have a chemistry and an identity, a unique identity to add to our attack. To stop them you have to do a lot of different things.”

For the better part of a decade, the only route to the NCAA tournament for America East teams has been the league’s tournament championship.

That could change this fall, however, due to the top-to-bottom strength in the conference. The America East clocked in at No. 3 in the RPI — behind only the ACC and Pac-12 — and has led online bracketology sites such as collegesoccernews.com to speculate the league could receive as many as four spots in the NCAA bracket when it comes out on Monday.

“Shhhh, stop talking about that,” Cormier said. “We don’t want to leave it up to a committee to decide what we’re going to do. We’d love to earn the right to be there.”

Contact Austin Danforth at 651-4851 or edanforth@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/eadanforth